PHILADELPHIA — While flipping through channels Thursday, Brett Brown admittedly couldn’t help but stop at the Miami-San Antonio broadcast.

The 76ers’ rookie coach felt covetous while watching the Spurs, his former employer. He saw a team that takes pride in playing defense. He saw a team that, a game earlier against Cleveland, racked up 39 assists on 43 baskets.

“That’s what you want to create. That’s what you hope to bring to this city,” Brown said after Friday’s practice.

Eventually, Brown hopes, the Sixers might get there.

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It starts with character guys, and Brown thinks he might have found one in Henry Sims. One of the return pieces in the trade-deadline deal that dispatched Spencer Hawes to the Cavaliers, Sims is a prideful defender who takes it personally when he gets beat.

Routinely in this painful season, Brown has pined for players who will stand up and cheer from the bench. It might sound like Brown is grasping for straws, but it’s all part of building a franchise from rubble. And the Sixers (15-46), who bring a 15-game losing streak into Saturday’s game against Utah, are at rock-bottom.

“I have a special interest in Patty Mills,” Brown said of San Antonio’s reserve point guard. “He started out there as a towel-swinger that never played. Then he became a towel-swinger that got in the game a little bit. Now he’s grown into the system and he’s won some games for them, and then he goes back to the bench and swings that same towel.

“They root for him. They know he rooted for them. And there’s such a strong chemistry dynamic that I’m jealous of that I want for this city and for our team.”

The small things, even waving towels, can make a painfully long season seem tolerable.

“He is (doing more). He’s slowly doing a little more physical stuff,” Brown said. “He’s slowly doing a little more and you can play him against another body. I highlight the word ‘slowly’ and I highlight the word ‘cautiously,’ but he’s doing it.

“I don’t want to paint the wrong picture. A little bit more, but he’s moving in that direction.”

In the portions of practice that are visible to reporters, Noel had been seen prior to this week working gingerly with only Sixers assistant Greg Foster in 1-on-1 drills. It sounds as though the 6-11 rookie center is now able to go against a teammate with slightly more resistance.

Noel has yet to make his debut. It’s been 13 months since the Kentucky product tore the ACL in his left knee. There’s no urgency to get the 19-year-old on the floor.

“Whether we ever get to see him in a game this year, it really is, ‘Who knows?’” Brown said. “I’ve gone on (the) record to say I wish I could coach him and get some games under our belt with him. But the boxes he has to tick, the ones we’ve always talked about, those have yet to be ticked.”

In other injury news, the odds on Brandon Davies’ return to the court are in stark contrast to those of Jason Richardson.

Davies, who has not played since Jan. 18, is “maybe a week away,” Brown said. The rookie forward this week began shooting with his right hand, a first since undergoing surgery to repair a broken right pinky finger. Brown said Richardson, a veteran guard who’s been out since last February following knee surgery, is unlikely to play.